Small businesses shouldn't wait for IT systems to break down

The technology that powers virtually every small business could be the undoing of many of those businesses. Think tape backups that don't back up, or anti-bad stuff software that protects each workstation but not the server that is the heart of the company network.

In many cases, information technology simply has raced past the business owner's ability to manage the function. In other instances, we don't take what in retrospect are common sense steps to keep our IT up to date.

So what happens at your place when that annoying hourglass takes seemingly permanent residence on your screen, or the server crashes and customers can't enter orders -- which may not matter because that dead server means you can't produce product anyway?

"You can't smack (your IT network) on the side and get it working again," sympathizes Dave Davenport, CEO of Mother Network Guardians, an Itasca IT managed services firm that serves smaller businesses. More positively, Davenport has some suggestions that can help keep small business IT operating efficiently:

• Protect your system. "You'd be surprised how many businesses don't upgrade their virus protections," Davenport says. "Think of your system as a language decoder that reads English, French and Italian but not German. When a message comes in German, your decoder doesn't see it."

Similarly, Davenport says, IT won't see potentially damaging attacks unless your anti-virus or intrusion prevention software, for example, is up to date.

There's also a Part B to system protection: Segregate access. The shipping clerk, Davenport says as an example, shouldn't be able to access accounting data.

• Manage your technology investments. Assess the status of your system and plan upgrades accordingly. "Know what (IT capability) your business will need, what you have, and determine where you can hold off and what you need to buy now," Davenport says.

Generally, Davenport adds, it's safe to buy hardware a bit ahead of the need but better to wait on software. "New software often has a lot of bugs," he says.

• Check your backup media. Davenport's concern is that no one checks the backup process. "Backup systems are failing," he says. "Tape drives fail because tapes wear out. Backup fails if a file is left open" during the process.

The problem: No one knows your backed-up data aren't there because no one checks.

• Keep company IT for company business. Davenport says 70 percent of bandwidth is used for such non-business applications as video downloads and social networking. Monitoring employee IT use can be dicey but may be necessary: Most spy ware and other malicious code come from such Web sites, Davenport says.

A written IT policy may help.

• Do preventive maintenance. Apply patches. Run virus scans. Check the log files (basically a performance summary) because, Davenport says, "Most systems will usually holler at you, 'I'm slowing down!' " Have an outside IT professional conduct an annual system audit.

© 2008, 121 Marketing Resources Inc.